Many companies using a managed program approach to IT services have staff regularly visiting the premises conduct backups of key systems, programs, and data. While this is a highly effective use of managed program staff, it can become even more effective when such staff are also asked to provide support for a backup reporting tool.

What is a Backup Reporting Tool?

Any infrastructure arrangement, that is somewhat complex, is likely to use more than one backup solution. This is in an effort to get complete ‘coverage’ of the system, even to the point of deliberately creating redundancies so that critical data can never go missing. The challenge, however, associated with multiple backup solutions is that the reporting tools included in each software package will reflect only what that particular software has backed up. Such tools cannot reflect a system-wide picture because that, of course, would have to include what other backup programs are doing or have done.

A backup reporting tool, in contrast, works in conjunction with all of the various backup processes and procedures used by a company. A single reporting tool means that managers and others can look at one report that will red-flag all areas of concerns. Without such a tool, workers seeking to verify backups must compare two or more reports and hope to manually spot what may be missing from all of them.

Backup reporting tools can be installed, maintained, and monitored by visiting staff as part of a managed program model of IT services.